


To Absent Fathers and Broken Sons

by AnonymousPuzzler



Category: Layton Brothers: Mystery Room, Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: (but we playing fast and loose with the disappearance specifically), (listen I know the timeline isn't consistent with lmj/anime but. roll with it), (most things should be semi-consistent with the game timelines), (of note are Hersh getting beat up Al getting shot and the whole mobile fortress deal), Adoption, Alcohol and smoking are both mentioned, Arguing, Azran Legacy Spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Curious Village Spoilers, Everyone In This Family Has Had Kind Of A Rough Time Of It, Gen, Hershel Layton Isn't A Perfect Dad But By God He's Trying, Just Like A Ton of Headcanons Really, Parenthood, Spoilers for every game but most especially:, Unwound Future Spoilers, references to other characters - Freeform, talking things out, various spatterings of angst and fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPuzzler/pseuds/AnonymousPuzzler
Summary: It has been exactly seventeen days since his son - his only son, a mere twenty-five years old - had been left on the brink of death.





	To Absent Fathers and Broken Sons

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous Puzzler be going back to her roots lads,
> 
> Seriously though, I've been sucked into the mini-resurgence of Mystery Room Content and it made me start playing Curious Village again for the billionth time, and generally remembering what a Good Good Series this is and uhh, whoops, character study. Expect lots of headcanons as to what happened in all those years between Unwound Future and Mystery Room/Mystery Journey, a bunch of introspective thought on How All Those Adventures Messed Up Our Man Hershel, and inexplicable sadness. Why this. The puzzles game is already very sad, @ myself, don't make it sadder.
> 
> Anyway, I'm so sorry for all the sadness, but I hope you enjoy reading anyway. Also, spoilers abound, obviously, most notably for Curious Village, Unwound Future and Azran Legacy. (And mmmaybe some vague Mystery Room spoilers if you squint, but.) Like, the big twists for all three of those games are pretty much explicitly spelled out in this fic, so if that's a concern for you, maybe come back to this one later.
> 
> Thanks again!

It has been exactly seventeen days.

Seventeen days ago - two weeks and change - Inspector Alfendi Layton, of the New Scotland Yard Serious Crimes Division, had been shot in the line of duty. Straight into the chest, just barely, miraculously shy of fully burying itself into his heart. Severe hemorrhaging had resulted, followed by a rush of transfusions and surgeries and, he’d been told, at least one terrifying instance of flatlining.

 _He’s lucky to be alive at all,_ the doctors had told him after Alfendi’s third day unresponsive. _His condition is still quite critical, but if nothing else, he’s stable. Ideally we’ll know more soon._

 _We’ll know more soon._ That had been fourteen days ago, now, a full two weeks, and little had changed.

It has been exactly seventeen days since his son - his only son, a mere twenty-five years old - had been left on the brink of death.

It has been seventeen days.

 

~

 

Forty-one years ago, Hershel Layton learned he was adopted.

It wasn’t especially a shock, if he were being honest. He’d been thirteen and looked less and less like his parents with each passing day, and he’d already begun to realize that they were just a touch too old to be his biological parents. They’d sat him down and told him, gentle and kind, the story of how he’d come to be their son: how they’d been unable to have children of their own, how they’d managed for years as honorary aunt and uncle to the children of loved ones, how a friend of a friend of a friend had a government connection with two orphaned children looking to be adopted. How their greatest regret had been that they weren’t permitted to take them both. (And that was the only thing that truly stunned Hershel; the thought that somewhere out there was a sibling he’d never know.) How the minute they took little Hershel by the hand and said hello, they’d felt a strange certainty that he was always meant to be part of their family.

In an odd way, it had been comforting to know that he was adopted. That his family had not just desired him as their child, but actively chose him as such, brought him in with open arms and desperate affection. Not once in his life, before or after that day, did he have a single doubt that the Laytons were his true parents, were the only family he needed.

 

~

 

Eighteen years ago, that past became more complicated. Once, he learned, once he’d been not Hershel Layton, but Theodore Bronev (an identity that, to this day - understandably, he thought - felt detached and alien to him), granted a new name in a last-minute subterfuge to ensure him the family he’d always loved so dearly. The real Hershel, his brother, had been painfully selfless then, but the decades that had passed and the tragedies therein had left him hateful, angry, unstable.

The real Hershel had taken the name Descole and tried to kill not only him, but many of those he held dear.

The real Hershel had taken the name Sycamore and slipped himself in close under a sympathetic mask, a viper in the grass letting Layton do his dirty work.

The real Hershel had not been as different as he might like to think from their father. A man so blinded by grief and ambition that he had done unspeakable evil, leaving a trail of bodies - his own granddaughter among them - in his wake. A man who had found a child with no one else to care for her (not altogether dissimilar from his own children, orphaned by the very organization he’d usurped), and tried to use her loneliness to turn her against the world in his favor.

Some days, lonely and full of heartache, he found his thoughts turning to them. Descole, Bronev, Emmy. A tangled web of manipulation and tragedy that he had only escaped because, one day, so many years ago, his painfully selfless brother had given him his own name.

Some days, he can’t help but wonder if things might have been different - if that tragic chain might have been broken before it even started - had his brother simply gone as intended, raised in the loving warmth of the Layton home, and left him behind.

 

~

 

Seventeen years ago, Hershel had nearly watched London fall.

To call the circumstances fantastic would be an understatement. Widespread kidnappings, a secret underground city, several faked instances (and one tragically, painfully real instance) of time travel, and a mobile fortress surely large and powerful enough to quantify a weapon of mass destruction had all been involved. By some miracle, Layton had managed to intervene before things became truly catastrophic, but by no means was London without any damage. No, entire neighborhoods had been leveled when the fortress emerged, and the overall death toll had been horrific. It was nearly a year before the sinkhole was been repaired, and even then, there was a long stretch where no residence or business would dare occupy the space, whether from fear of a repeat incident or reverence for those who had lost their lives.

It was difficult not to feel responsible. Certainly, he had stopped the machine as soon as he could, strived to minimize the loss of life - even the man responsible had been rescued from his own malfunctioning fortress before it fell - but one couldn’t escape the nagging feeling of _if only I’d figured it out sooner, stopped it just a few moments earlier._ How many lives could have been saved in the margin of a few minutes?

The revelation that he’d known the boy, been there in the moments that started the darkness that resulted in this tragedy, only made things worse. Was there something he could have done, all those years ago, to better comfort the lad? To keep him from turning to violent revenge?

(And all that was to say nothing of the more personal loss he’d been forced to revisit. Maybe, just maybe, if he’d had said something - asked her to stay a little longer, offered to walk her to work, even gone through with it and proposed to her at the restaurant the week before - there could have been a way for him to stop it, keep her from going through with the test, avoid the deaths of her and all those who had become collateral—

But he knew, deep down, such ruminating was pointless. What was done, was done. There was no way to change the past. Only to remember, and learn, and use that to try and better the future ahead.)

 

~

 

Sixteen years ago, Hershel adopted Alfendi.

He was nine years old, then, and a curious lad, to say the least. Puzzling and contradictory in a way that fascinated Layton immensely. He put on a brash, even violent persona at times, and his caretakers at the time had seemed exasperated by and terrified of him in turns. And yet underneath that facade, he’d found more. He’d found a boy who loved to act, loved to sing, loved cooking and food, loved costumes and dramatics. Loved mysteries and police procedurals not, as many assumed, for admiration of the criminals, but for the exhilaration of unraveling the plots of even the most devious foes and reigning triumphant.

“I always figure it out before the end,” he’d bragged one day, midway through a radio play, manic light in his golden-green eyes, “because I learned to think the same way the criminals do. If you think like them, then you can be one step ahead of them, and then you can figure out _any_ mystery. I think all the best detectives must think like that, but they’re too scared to say so, because people are stupid and think only bad guys can think like criminals.”

Hershel had hummed with thought, considering. “I think people tend to be frightened of things that they don’t understand,” he mused. “But yes, one must always consider various perspectives when trying to uncover the truth, even those which might frighten them. You’re a very bright and very brave lad to see it that way.”

The sheer warmth and pride and _acceptance_ he’d seen in the boy’s face at that had convinced him, from that moment through all the years following, that this boy was not the monster so many had come to see him as. No, he was not in the least a young psychopath, admiring the art of charlatans and murderers without irony, but a lad wise beyond his years ready to follow those lines of thinking if it meant the uncovering of the truth, an all-encompassing devotion to real and true justice.

He recalled, distantly, the things Clive had said as he raised up the mobile fortress. How he’d been consumed by the delusion that his violent, directionless lust for revenge was a manifestation of justice.

Alfendi, he’d been told, had lived in one of the very neighborhoods that had fallen. On the tragic day, he’d been assigned detention for mouthing off to one of the teachers, and had been kept late at school on the other side of town.

His parents hadn’t been so lucky.

He could do nothing to change what he’d been able to do for Clive. But here, and now, he could choose to open his home and his heart to this lonely, brilliant young man.

And so he did.

 

~

 

On day eighteen, Hershel wakes well before his alarm, feeling much more heavy and stiff than middle-age would imply. He may be well into his fifties, now, the youngest of his children soon to reach adulthood, but he _does_ take care of himself, for the most part.

Then again, he’s been working himself to the bone lately, given the situation at hand. The first few days he’d spent entirely by Alfendi’s hospital bed, from the moment visiting hours started to the second they finally forced him out, and in the scant hours in-between he found sleep evaded him.

After that, he’d been reluctantly convinced to space out his visits by the doctors and Alfendi’s co-workers alike. _It could still be days, or even weeks, before he wakes up,_ the doctors had said; _and one of us will be by his side any time you’re not,_ one of his case partners - Justin, he thinks was his name, a burly man who looked like a reference image for the very concept of _hard-boiled cop_ \- had assured. Flora had given him the additional comfort of setting him up, after years of needling, with a beeper (he still didn’t quite understand the contraption, but the thought of the doctors being able to contact him immediately with any developments was comforting), and he’d resumed his coursework for the sake of some semblance of normalcy, though his eating and sleeping habits remained sporadic at best.

With all that in mind, actually, it was little wonder his limbs felt like lead.

But he could not allow himself to wallow. He had other children to tend to, after all. Flora was a grown woman now (thirty-one this year; where does the time go), but still so often a delicate thing, and her brother’s current condition had left old insecurities and anxieties bubbling to the surface, so he’d done his best to offer extra support to help her through. And of course, dear Katrielle, his youngest, was only seventeen, still a child. Not to mention she and Alfendi had always been the closest of all the siblings. In many ways, he notes with a tinge of regret, she was far closer to him than Hershel was. It was only natural she’d take the incident quite hard.

He inhales sharply and hoists himself out of bed, steadfastly ignoring his joints’ creaks and pops of protest, the subtle swimming of his head as he stands upright. He cleans up and dresses, barely caring what he digs out from the dresser, and finds a semblance of comfort in the silk brim of his top hat as he puts it on.

(Claire, he often finds himself thinking, would have been an exceptional mother, would have adored all his children with her whole heart. He’s no shame in admitting that asking himself what she might do in a given situation has significantly strengthened his abilities as a parent.)

Cooking has never been his strong suit, but if nothing else he can make serviceable eggs and toast, not to mention a much-needed pot of tea. Everything’s ready and laid out on the table by the time Flora wanders out of her room, looking slightly red around the eyes. He catches her in a warm, lingering hug, desperate to provide any measure of comfort, on his way to go wake Katrielle, who habitually sleeps through her alarm and is doing no differently today.

All three of them cling to the minutiae of routine to pull themselves through the morning. Breakfast and tea, idle chatter about who has what to do today, a puzzle or two exchanged. (No one dares mention how, normally, Alfendi would have stopped by on his morning jog, and on most days insistently taken over breakfast preparations himself.)

Once everyone is fed and clean and dressed, they head out to the Laytonmobile - Hershel driving, Flora on the passenger side, Katrielle in the back with her overstuffed satchel - and set off on their morning commute. Katrielle will be dropped off at secondary school first, and then Hershel and Flora will continue on to Gressenheller, where he’ll teach classes and she’ll continue to chip away towards a doctorate in engineering, a goal of which he is endlessly proud.

“Right turn here, father,” Katrielle reminds him from the back, and he narrowly makes the turn. He’s embarrassed to say that these past two weeks have been the most consistently he’s driven his youngest to school in years, and he’s not yet fully familiarized himself with the route. Often he heads to the university early for office hours or a meeting, or he’s out of town entirely on some archeological quest or another, leaving his children to fend for themselves in terms of food and transportation. It’s not a habit he’s even remotely proud of, and in recent years he’s actively strived to change it, but sadly, when the choice comes down to either disappointing his children or risking relationships with valued university partners and donors requesting his expertise…

Well. He’s not here to defend himself, really.

“It’s over two and a half weeks today,” Katrielle notes, almost absentmindedly, the implications obvious even without her stating them outright. He glances back in the rear-view mirror to see her sitting with her head against the glass of the window, unfocused gaze following the buildings and cars outside. He flicks his eyes back up to Flora, who’s staring down at her hands in her lap, looking just as exhausted as he feels.

“I wouldn’t let it worry you,” he assures, ostensibly in response to Katrielle, but really to the both of them. “Do you recall what I told you about the time I was in the hospital all those years back? I wasn’t much older than Alfendi is now, in fact. It was over a month before I woke up, but in the end I managed to pull through just fine.”

(He doesn’t mention how he’d simply been beaten within an inch of his life, rather than shot dangerously close to the heart, nor that age has brought back a number of those old aches and pains in a way he suspects will be to his increasing physical detriment in the years to come. His girls are both quite bright, startlingly so, and he doesn’t doubt they’ll come to the same conclusions on their own. But in the meantime, he hopes they’ll take what he says at face-level for even a momentary comfort.)

Katrielle nods, and for several minutes more, the drive is quiet. “Are we going to go see him again this afternoon?”

“If you’d like,” he says, as if he wasn’t already planning to do so, as if they haven’t been to see Alfendi every day after classes for the past two weeks. “I’ll pick you up to drive over to the hospital when your classes end at… three?”

“Two-thirty,” she corrects him, grabbing her satchel and slinging it over her shoulder as they approach the school.

“Two-thirty, of course,” he nods, knowing in his heart this is the third time she’s had to remind him this week alone. “Forgive your old father, my dear. I’ll be there, don’t you worry.”

She smiles, not quite as warm and wide as he’s used to, but in these difficult times, he’ll take it heartily. “Love you, father,” she says, leaning forward to catch him in an awkward one-armed hug from the backseat, and presses a quick kiss to his cheek before she scrambles out of the car and up the steps to the school.

Flora says nothing for most of their commute to Gressenheller. At one stoplight, he takes a moment to reach over and grab her closest hand, and she responds by clinging tight. It had taken him a long time - much, much too long, frankly - to truly grasp the extent of her anxiety and loneliness, the fear of abandonment which he’d inadvertently kicked into overdrive each time he left her behind in a misguided effort to keep her safe. It had been easier once she had Alfendi and Katrielle with her, yes, but it wasn’t quite the same as having her guardian within close reach, and he deeply regretted that the nature of his profession required him to leave her (all his children, really) alone so often.

“You’re welcome to come and work in my office any time today, Flora,” he offers, a small comfort. “I’ve only two classes, so I’ll be in there most of the day working on research and paperwork.”

“I might,” she nods, not looking up from her lap, voice still as soft and sweet and uncertain as it’d been when they’d met some seventeen years ago. A pause, then, impossibly quieter, “Do you really think he’s going to be okay?”

“I do,” he answers, though he wishes he felt as confident as he’s trying to sound. “You know how stubborn your brother can be. He’d be loathe to be taken down in his prime like this. I’ve no doubt he’ll be up and back on his feet in no time at all.”

Flora nods again, though there’s no heart in it. They continue their drive in silence.

 

~

 

It was harder to notice how often he was absent when he was still in the thick of it. Certainly, a dig or a field study or (rare as he tried to make them following Luke’s departure) an investigation into a mystery would occupy his time and pull him away from home for a few days, a couple weeks, sometimes a month at a time. But then he’d be back, and fall into routine, and at least in his eyes, it was as if he’d never been gone at all.

And when it really, truly mattered, he thought, he was there, he was _always_ there. When parent-teacher conferences rolled around, he was there to both absorb well-earned praise and rise to his children’s defense when necessary. (Alfendi could stir up trouble, certainly, but he maintained that it was simply the volatile combination of a need to show off with his ever-present thirst for justice; Katrielle, meanwhile, was simply a class clown whose big heart and incredible lack of impulse control occasional spurred her on to cause a scene or pick a fight.) Alfendi started acting, first at school and then with the community theatre, when he was fourteen, and Hershel always made sure to be there opening night with a bouquet of flowers and hearty congratulations. There’d been many occasions where he’d dropped his classes for the day and rushed home to tend to one or all of them when sickness struck, wiping fevered brows and reading them stories till they fell asleep.

He’d hardly say he was a perfect parent. No, quite the opposite, he felt what he was doing was the barest amount of decency his children deserved, that many day he was just barely scraping by as a guardian.

But by God, he was trying.

 

~

 

Alfendi had been the first of his children to move out - would be the only one until Katrielle was a grown woman, he suspected, given Flora’s separation anxiety. He’d been nineteen, and though part of Hershel felt that it was too young for the boy to set off on his own, he had to acknowledge such concerns were unfounded and, frankly, hypocritical. He’d been only seventeen when he left Stansbury, after all, travelling all the way to London alone, with no friends or family whatsoever to meet him there.

Alfendi, conversely, was simply heading across town to be closer to Scotland Yard, where he’d inevitably be working not long after graduation. Not to mention he had a fine collection of friends from university and the community theatre alike, a couple of whom he was moving into the new flat with. He’d be close, more than close enough to visit with regularity, and even more importantly, he’d be safe and well-supported.

It didn’t stop the earliest stirrings of empty-nest syndrome from settling in, though. (He could only imagine how difficult it would be when little Katrielle set off on her own.) Nor, of course, did it stop his general anxieties as a father, the double-edged sword of wanting to check up on his son while simultaneously knowing he needed his space to be his own man.

...nor, he gradually realized, did it change the way Alfendi seemed unusually curt and distant about the whole affair of moving. Or the way that he tended to drop by for visits when Hershel was away more often than when he was there. Or that he was receiving letters and calls from Alfendi so scarcely that most of his up-to-date information was coming secondhand from Katrielle, with whom Alfendi apparently kept up much more frequent contact.

Twice was a coincidence, they say, but three times was a pattern. Alfendi was avoiding him. Deliberately so, it seemed. And try as he might, he couldn’t figure out _why_.

...he wasn’t the type to pry. But he’d be lying if he said the thought didn’t keep him up some nights.

 

~

 

 _“I_ **_hate_ ** _you,”_ Alfendi spat into the receiver.

Hershel could only respond by blinking into his mostly-cold tea. He’d been up late correcting some term papers when the phone had rung, and frankly, he’d been in quite a panic, certain the only reason someone would call his home line at this hour would be an emergency. And then it’d been Alfendi’s voice on the other end, and he’d feared the worst, but then - this. He supposed it wasn’t a much better situation than Alfendi being sick or hurt, really, but at the same time he was so thrown by the unexpectedness of it that he found himself struggling to process it properly.

“All right,” he finally responded, at a loss for what else he could possibly say to such a declaration.

Alfendi laughed, though the sound was bitter and cruel. _“Really? ‘All right’?? Is that_ seriously _all you have to say on the matter?!”_

“I’m not sure what else I _can_ say,” he admitted. The idea of his own son _hating_ him was upsetting, to be sure, but he felt as such distantly, through a blanket of numbness, as if his emotions had been dosed with novocain. “I’d certainly like to know _why,_ but obviously you’re under no obligation to tell me, and frankly, I suspect you’re not particularly inclined to humor me with such a conversation at this time.”

 _“Oh,_ **_fuck_ ** _you,”_ Alfendi seethed, making him jump. The boy could be brusque, surely, but he rarely swore, and certainly not to Hershel’s face. _“Don’t give me that— that idiotic mild-mannered charade like you don’t know full well what’s been going on. Do you_ seriously _expect me to believe you don’t know why I_ hate _you so much?!”_

He’d considered a long moment, lips pursed. Certainly, there were times that Alfendi had been mad at him - many times that irritation had been earned - but Alfendi’s fury tended more to the performative than the long-simmering, and he found himself sifting through every possible incident he could think of, wondering which had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Apparently, the long silence had been too much for Alfendi’s tested patience. _“Bastard,”_ he mumbled, and Hershel heard the distinct noise of him sipping something (an observation quickly filed away for later). _“You bastard, of course. Of_ course _you don’t know. Probably never crossed your mind, you stupid man.”_

“Alfendi—”

 _“You kept_ **_leaving!!_ ** _”_ The sudden roar took his breath away, any words he might have been preparing to say dying in his throat. _“You were_ always _leaving us alone and- and you know Flora can’t bloody function when you leave her behind like that, and Kat was just a_ baby _, and_ **_I_ ** _had to be the one taking care of everyone!! Who- tell me, who do you think was_ feeding _us every time you went away?! Getting everyone to school?! Keeping the flat clean?! It was_ me, _father, I- I wasn’t even a_ teenager _yet and I had to take care of all that because_ **_you_ ** _couldn’t be bothered to stick around!!”_

There was another long bout of quiet after the outburst, and Hershel found himself considering his next words carefully. After all, Alfendi was entirely correct. He’d thought it enough that his children _seemed_ self-sufficient, that he did his best to make up for his absences when work _didn’t_ take him away from home. But he hadn’t considered how the repeated abandonment, the unspoken expectation to care for themselves, would stack up over all that time.

_“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?!”_

“...you’re right,” he finally responded, somber. “You’re absolutely right. I hadn’t considered how it would affect you to keep stepping in for me when I was gone, and that was wrong of me. I’m truly sorry, Alfendi. You’ve every right to be furious with me.”

The silence resumed, but that time, it was Alfendi at a loss for words. _“Don’t,”_ he finally said, voice small and choked. _“Don’t you dare. You— you don’t get to be level-headed and apologetic about this, you, you can’t—”_

“I’m not sure what else you’d like me to say, Alfendi. I can’t change what’s been done, but I’m legitimately sorry for putting those expectations on you. You’re under no obligation to forgive me, but I hope you’ll understand I’m regretful all the same.”

 _“_ ** _Shut up!!_** _”_ He’d snapped, though by then his tone was less the bellowing rage from earlier and more broken, almost tearful. He’d heard a clatter in the background, Alfendi cursing under his breath, the sound of liquid being poured. _“Shut— shut up, you, you can’t—”_

“Alfendi,” Hershel interrupted, several clues clicking into place - the late-night call, Alfendi’s emotional state, the audible sip of something mere minutes ago - “are you drunk?”

Another broken laugh. _“Brilliant deduction there, pops. Really, took you long enough. What, are you going to try and_ scold _me?”_

Hershel’s brow had furrowed. Alfendi was a grown man, yes, and entirely within his rights to drink if he so pleased. He had no objections there. But he knew from Katrielle’s periodic updates that Alfendi had moved recently, to his own flat without roommates, and the thought of him being _that_ intoxicated with no one to keep watch on him—

“I’m going to come over there to check on you,” he said, fatherly protectiveness overwhelming the desire to give Alfendi his (clearly very much desired) space.

_“Ha! Likely. You don’t know where I live.”_

“I _do_ speak to your sister, Alfendi. I won’t be ten minutes. Do drink some water in the meantime, won’t you?”

 _“Sod off,”_ he grumbled, half-hearted. Hershel had waited another moment to see if he would say more, but there was nothing, so he quietly hung up and headed for the door.

 

~

 

Alfendi’s flat really was a mere ten-minute drive away - a tad farther from the Yard than his last place, but nestled comfortably in the theatre district as a compromise, which he was certain Alfendi adored. Even on foot, he doubted it would take longer than half an hour at a brisk walk to make it from the Layton family home home to the new flat.

All the more reason, he realized in retrospect, that he should have been more concerned when Alfendi’s visits became increasingly scarce.

Graciously, Katrielle had informed him not only of the address, but of the specific flat Alfendi was occupying. (It would have been dreadfully difficult to try and puzzle that out on his own, especially without rudely awakening anyone at such a late hour.) Third floor, fifth room down; he made his way up without trouble, rapping on the door, fully expecting that Alfendi would ignore him and he’d be left waiting on the stoop quite a while, assuming he let him in at all.

Instead, much to his surprise, Alfendi opened the door on the first knock, staring at his father in a way Hershel could only describe as _weary._ There were dark circles under his usually-bright eyes, his deep crimson hair an unruly mess, shirt sloppily half-unbuttoned and untucked. In the hand not holding the doorknob, Hershel could clearly see a half-emptied glass of bourbon, and even if he hadn’t, the boy reeked of not just alcohol, but cigarette smoke as well. (Had he taken up smoking? That had been one thing he hadn’t mentioned to Katrielle, as he would confirm later on.)

“I’d hoped you were joking about coming over,” Alfendi grumbled, though there was little heat in it. He opened the door enough for Hershel to walk in, then promptly turned away without waiting to see if he actually would.

He’d stepped in, toed off his shoes, and quietly shut the front door behind him. It was a nice little flat - artfully low lighting, some new furniture he didn’t recognize, some framed Broadway posters he decidedly did (he’d been the one who’d gotten them for Alfendi, after all, gifted over many a birthday and holiday, prized among them the signed playbook from one Janice Quatlane). An ashtray on the table by the sofa, the cigarette in it visibly still lit and wafting up thin tendrils of smoke, an opened bourbon bottle next to that. Alfendi walked over - or, stumbled, more like, his long legs clearly working to his disadvantage as he became increasingly intoxicated - placed his glass beside the bottle, and picked up the cigarette instead, taking a long, slow drag.

Daring him to say something, he gathered. Practically begging him to be offended and try to scold his son for such habits, so Alfendi would have an excuse to grow angry again and resume arguing. It was a tactic he’d used before, and with each instance, Hershel had grown increasingly adept at resisting the bait.

“I truly am sorry to intrude,” he’d said instead, cool and level-headed. “I was simply concerned that you were intoxicated with no one here to keep an eye on you.”

 _“Concerned,”_ Alfendi snorted derisively, flopping heavily down the sofa, a thick cloud of smoke emerging from his mouth as he spoke. “Of course. _Concerned._ Any excuse to come by and judge me, hm?”

“You haven’t had any water to drink since I called, I gather.”

His only response was to retrieve his bourbon from the table, not even looking up to do so, and drain the glass.

Restraining a sigh, Hershel moved into the kitchenette without another word.

It was small, but at the same time, exactly what Alfendi had always said he wanted - clean, ample, high-quality countertops, a top-of-the-line stove, a roomy fridge given the space allowed. He must spend his evenings and weekends cooking up a storm in here, Hershel imagined. Alfendi had always loved to cook. (...had been forced to, he now realized, by his being away so often. _Someone_ had to feed the three of them, as Alfendi so pointedly told him.) The space was also, he noted, organized almost exactly like the kitchen at home, so despite not asking where the glasses were, he found them in the first cabinet he’d instinctively opened.

He added ice to the first large glass he could reach (because Alfendi had always preferred his cold drinks freezing and his warm drinks boiling), filled it up with water, and returned to the main seating area, setting the glass where Alfendi’s bourbon had been moments ago. It would be foolish to try and force him to drink it as if he were a child, he realized, so he would have to simply lead the horse and hope, so to speak. In the meantime, he took a seat on the chair just across from Alfendi, trying not to stare directly at him but finding there was little other place for his eyes to go.

Alfendi simply glowered back, taking another long drag of his cigarette. “Any time you’d like to move this along and lecture me, that’d be great,” he sneered. “The drinking, the cigarettes, whatever. Plenty of places you can start. Just get it done with so I can bid you good evening and send you on your way.”

“I’m hardly going to lecture you, Alfendi,” he replied. “You’re a grown adult, and your own man. You’ve every right to live your life as you see fit.”

To his surprise, that had resulted in a bitter laugh. “Funny that _you_ of all people see it that way.”

He’d blinked, brow furrowing as he tried to connect pieces that weren’t yet there. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“Do you know what I hear _every_ bloody time I introduce myself to someone?” He sneered back, not looking at Hershel, seeming to speak more to himself than anyone else. “They say, ‘Layton? As in Professor Layton? Is he your father??’ Every goddamned _time!!_ Not a single person at the station, not _one_ eyewitness I’ve questioned. _Years_ _,_ I’ve worked myself to the bone, dragged my way up the ranks, cracked cases no one else could or _would_ solve—” He paused for another long drag of his cigarette, practically a stump now, fingers shaking and tone increasingly doing the same— “And yet here I am, a— a _footnote_ to the illustrious career of London’s _noble hero,_ Hershel Layton!!”

He waited to respond, quietly mulling over the words, until Alfendi had finished his cigarette and stubbed out the end with such fury one would think it offended him. “...you’re right. That’s quite unfair,” he finally answered, because it was the truth. “Your position has nothing to do with me, and certainly all of your successes have been on your own merit.”

 _“Exactly!!”_ He shouted, lurching forward in his seat in a way that was downright manic. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for _myself._ _I_ supported myself when you were gone. _I_ got into school on my own merits and got my position because of _my_ successes there. I’ve solved cases you _never_ could have cracked. And yet I’m just—” his voice broke, and he leaned back abruptly, looking like he was trying to remind himself to be angry so he wouldn’t look like he was about to cry. _“Second fiddle._ The _other_ Layton. Nothing- nothing more than your _successor.”_

There was silence between them for a long, long time after that.

“...there is good news,” Hershel finally noted.

Alfendi cackled. “Oh, I doubt it. But go ahead, _enlighten_ me.”

“I’m getting old.”

That did catch Alfendi’s attention, bitter grin slipping in favor of a curious look with, as far as he could gather, an undercurrent of real concern. “I’m fifty-two now, Alfendi, and fifty-three is coming up fast,” he elaborated. “Most of the so-called ‘heroics’ people associate with me happened nearly two decades ago, and I certainly have no intention of attempting to repeat such feats at my current age. Quite the opposite, really; if I could retire today and still be able to support you kids, I would.” He paused, swallowing thickly, and added, “I rather wish I could have done as such years ago, knowing now how badly my being away affected you children. To say it was a poor work-life balance would be to minimize it. You needed me, and I wasn’t there. Frankly, I’m… I’m ashamed, my dear boy.”

“Nothing you can do about it now,” Alfendi scoffed, though his voice had gone raspy and small. In a way that seemed almost without thinking, he retrieved the glass of water beside him and began to sip at it gingerly. “...you were saying something about being old.”

“I was,” Hershel nodded. “What I’m getting at, is, I’m getting older, and the older I get, the less I’ll be in the public eye, and the more what I did when I was young will be forgotten. But you, Alfendi - you’re still very young, and you’re only accomplishing more and more with each passing day. More than I was at your age, certainly. A day is coming where you’ll surpass me, without question, and it’s coming _soon._ Before we know it, I’ll be dawdling away in some retirement home listening to everyone say, ‘Hershel Layton? As in the father of _Inspector Alfendi Layton?_ ’”

Alfendi chuckled, once, at the mental image, taking a larger gulp of his water. Any rage from earlier had seemed to melt away, replaced entirely with that bone-deep sense of weariness, body sinking heavily back into the sofa cushions. “Certainly doesn’t make it any bloody easier right now, though. I’m accomplishing things _now._ It’s not fair that I have to _wait_ for you to- to _age out_ of heroism.”

“It’s not,” he agreed, gentle. Then, after a momentary judgement call, he’d reached forward, carefully patted the boy’s knee, and added, “I’m only sorry that all I can do is offer sympathy. You’ve more than earned that recognition and praise, Alfendi.”

And that did it. In the blink of an eye, gone was the bitter, drinking, smoking twenty-three year old who’d called just to say he hated him. In its place, eyes visibly watering and hand jumping to his face to hide a quivering lip, was his son, the boy who yelled and screamed and threw fits because it was easier than admitting he was upset.

Hershel stood and moved to the space on the sofa beside him, placing his hands carefully on his shoulders; Alfendi barely managed to set down his glass before turning to him, all six-foot-three of him folding in on itself, trying to disguise the way little sobs were already breaking free.

“I called you because I wanted to fight with you,” he whimpered, hands balling to fists where he clutches them in front of his eyes. “You never fight back. Why won’t you just _fight_ with me for once?”

“You’ll have to stop making reasonable points if you really want to upset me into fighting, Alfendi. Everything you’ve said to me has been the truth. To claim otherwise would make me a quite awful parent - or, well. Worse than I’ve been, at any rate.”

“You’re not _awful,”_ he huffed. “Or— well. You _were,_ but you _weren’t_ \- oh, I don’t know. I don’t hate you,” he finally landed on, tucking his mess of hair under Hershel’s chin. “It was good when you were around. It just sucked how often you _weren’t.”_

“I agree,” he murmured, even if it wasn’t… exactly the _language_ he would use. “I’m sorry I placed all that pressure on you, my boy. It wasn’t fair in the least. I only hope I’m not entirely too late to salvage things with Flora and Katrielle.”

Alfendi snorted against his chest. “You’ll not have to _salvage_ with the two of them. Katrielle’s the baby of the family. She never has and never _will_ have to worry about feeling responsible for _anything._ And Flora…” He hummed, searching for the words. “...she’s more resilient than we give her credit for, I think.”

“Regardless. If I can find a way to make things better for you children - all of you - then I will strive to do so.”

“People won’t stop asking for you, you know,” Alfendi mused. “You can’t please everyone, father. Whether it’s us or the university or the public or- whoever, you’re going to disappoint someone eventually.”

He’d considered that a long, long moment, the words sinking in slowly. As always, Alfendi had an alarming tendency to be wise beyond his years. “Perhaps you’re right, my boy,” he murmured, thoughtful. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Case in point,” he continued, twisting out from under Hershel’s chin just enough to give him a wry grin. “You rushing off to check on me and leaving my poor, dear sisters alone without warning. What on earth will they think when they wake up and find you gone?”

“Ideally, I’ll be back before either of them do,” he answered, though embarrassingly, he had to admit, he’d been so worried about Alfendi that he hadn’t even considered the notion before he ran out. (Another bad habit for him to work on breaking, he supposed.) “And if not… well. I suppose I’ll just have to apologize. Regardless, the important thing is, at this moment you needed me here more. You’re not less of a priority to me than your siblings, Alfendi.”

The statement appeared to strike home, because Alfendi suddenly went quiet again, averting his gaze with a flustered look, blinking back another round of tears. Hershel, meanwhile, took a moment to consider the situation at hand - Alfendi, better than he had been but still tipsy and emotionally rattled, the girls back home, sleeping but alone - and puzzle out a solution for all given problems.

“Perhaps we can reach a compromise,” he finally said, re-attracting Alfendi’s attention. “Would you consider coming back to the house just for tonight? That way, you’re not alone if the bourbon takes a bad turn, and the girls aren’t left on their own through the night. Not to mention, I’m certain they’d both be delighted to see you in the morning. I’ll even let you say it was your idea to surprise them.”

Alfendi smirked, light already beginning to return to his eyes. “An acceptable proposal, with one additional condition: I get to take us all out to breakfast. There’s a lovely little place near here that I’m positive the girls will just _adore.”_

“Mm, and does taking us out imply you’ll be paying for the meal? Remember Katrielle’s appetite, dear boy. It won’t do to have you lose your rent money so soon after moving.”

“She’s got an allowance,” Alfendi quipped in reply. “She can pay for herself rather than running us both dry.”

Hershel couldn’t help but laugh, and in that moment - concerns voiced, olive branches offered, understandings reached, the both of them chuckling to themselves in the dim light of the flat - it was as if, in a metaphorical if not literal sense, Alfendi had come home.

 

~

 

Stacks of ungraded papers and exams had piled up on Hershel’s desk over the past two weeks, and try as he might, he doesn’t seem to be able to make a dent in them. His students had been understanding, though - it spread around campus quickly that Professor Layton’s son was in critical condition at the hospital, so no one seemed eager to pressure him into working faster at such a trying time. An additional side effect had been an influx of flowers and cards from faculty and students alike, making his already-cluttered office that much more claustrophobic, overflowing with physical manifestations of sympathy.

When it becomes clear that he isn’t going to make any considerable progress on grading, he quietly relents and moves to the couch instead, sipping idly at a cup of tea in an effort to steady his nerves. Flora had indeed decided to work in his office that day, so in place of the artifacts and fossils and rock samples that usually littered the adjacent table, there are bolts and wires and tools covering the surface instead.

“Might I ask what this is going to be?” He asks, mostly out of legitimate curiosity - he always wants to be up-to-date on what Flora’s working on - but partially in an attempt to seek distraction.

Luckily, he knows for a fact that Flora is equally as eager for the latter, so she answers without so much as looking up from the wiring she’s placing. “If it works properly, it should essentially be a small-scale wind turbine for use with electronics. Something that can be started with a small amount of energy input and from there, produce additional energy for the device without consuming any electrical charge. Paul brought by some additional materials for me to use a few weeks back, before—” She cuts herself off, expression tightening, but they both know what she means without another word.

“That was very kind of Paul,” Hershel notes levelly, providing them both a much-needed out of the implied line of thought. Don Paul (or _Don Paolo,_ as he continued to insist, aggressively, whenever he dropped by) had struck up quite the odd friendship with Flora after he assisted with her rescue all those years ago, and he’d been delighted to the point of tears when she decided to pursue engineering thanks to his influence. Oh, he still tried to claim he and Layton were _“bitter rivals”_ and he was going to make him pay or some such nonsense, but it had been years since he’d done anything more dastardly than dropping by unannounced for tea.

(He’d stayed at the house with the girls those first few days, when Hershel was spending his every waking hour at Alfendi’s bedside. He was immensely grateful, even if Paul _had_ dismantled his toaster and half-assembled a miniature attack-bot with the parts while he was gone.)

“He says I ought to revisit his old flying auto design as part of my thesis project,” Flora adds, with just the slightest ghost of a smile. “I told him I didn’t dare break your heart by trying to turn the Laytonmobile back into a haphazard prototype, and he’d have to get me a car of my own before I’d entertain setting to work on such a thing.”

“Oh, Flora, you know that’s a dangerous thing to say. Now he’ll be absolutely breaking his back trying to actually find you an auto to use.”

“Maybe that was my intention all along,” she teases with a little giggle, the first he’s heard in the past two weeks. “Do you think I ought to hint to him that I’d prefer a yellow one? I think that would be cute. Like one of those sweet little Beetle cars.”

“That would certainly suit you,” he chuckles, smiling into his tea. For a moment, it’s as if everything is normal. For a moment, they can pretend there’s nothing wrong at all, that this isn’t simply a fleeting distraction from the tragedy that’s consumed their past eighteen days.

Flora works in relative quiet for another few minutes, then glances up at the clock. “We’ll want to be leaving soon to pick up Katrielle,” she notes. “It’s already two o’clock now.”

“It’s a bit early to leave, isn’t it? Her classes go until three.”

“Two-thirty, professor, not three.”

“Ah— of course,” he nods, blushing. He recalls, abruptly, that Katrielle had already reminded him as such as recently as this morning, and he can’t entirely blame his absent-mindedness on the current situation alone.

(He really does need to be better.)

They set out about ten minutes later, after Flora has carefully packed away all her tools and supplies and chided Hershel into, at the very least, organizing his still-ungraded papers into a neat stack. They’re mostly quiet again as they load into the Laytonmobile, retracing the route to Katrielle’s school through afternoon traffic. The air is paradoxically tenser and more hopeful than their morning drive, as has been the case for the past two weeks - after all, it’s much easier to get one’s hopes up when they’re actively on their way to see Alfendi, but at the same time, there’s that lingering, dreadful knowledge that he likely won’t yet be awake when they arrive.

(Or worse, but he hasn’t been allowing himself to think about that.)

Katrielle has barely opened the door and begun to scramble into the backseat when a sudden, inexplicable buzzing sound at his hip takes him by surprise. Before he can even figure out what to make of it, Flora, wide-eyed, dives for his coat pocket and retrieves - ah. Of course, the beeper she set up for him. It’s the first time he’s had it go off, so he wasn’t aware how—

The beeper is going off.

“It’s the hospital’s number,” Flora all but whispers, voice shaking, and in an instant he sees her expression loop back-and-forth countless times between blinding hope and utter terror. (And he can’t blame her, really. If the hospital is trying to contact him, there are really only two possibilities: the moment they’ve all been desperately hoping for, or the moment they’ve all been praying would never come.) “P-professor, it’s, it’s the hospital—”

“Father?” He snaps out of his stupor just long enough to look over his shoulder at Katrielle in the backseat, and the desperate, questioning look in her eyes reminds him all too keenly that she’s still very much a child, too young to be made to deal with this.

“Fasten your seatbelt, dear,” he hears himself say. (It feels detached, too gentle and level for the way his heart is pounding, the way he’s frantically sending his train of thought in circles to avoid focusing in on the worst-case scenario.) She nods, and he hears the click of the buckle as she does so, and he’s dimly aware that he’s turning back around, squeezing Flora’s shoulder, setting his eyes on the road ahead.

It has been eighteen days. His daughters are staring at him, frightened and pleading and uncertainly daring to hope. His only son is laid up in a hospital bed and he doesn’t know whether to pray for the best or prepare for the worst.

He decides on neither, empties his mind best he can, and drives.

 

~

 

The hospital is about twenty minutes from Katrielle’s school by car; perhaps fifteen, if traffic is exceptionally forgiving. They make it in just shy of ten, through a series of back-streets and risky maneuvers that he barely remembers, but suspects would make even the likes of Emmy chide him for being reckless.

The girls bolt from the car before he’s even finished pulling into a parking spot, and by the time he rushes in after them, they’re all but clambering over the front desk, both of them shouting at the unfortunate receptionist in such a frantic, breathless jumble that it’s impossible to make out a word. He tugs them each gently back by an arm, throwing the receptionist an apologetic look. “We’re the family of Alfendi Layton. Room 51-B. I’m told the staff just attempted to call us?”

“Of course,” the receptionist, however shaken by the earlier assault, nods. “Let me call down the doctor to lead you up.”

He sees Katrielle open her mouth, more than likely to say _we know the way thank you very much,_ but he squeezes her arm to stop her before she can, quietly thanking the receptionist instead. The staff has seen them often enough these past two weeks to know they can find their way to Alfendi’s room unaccompanied. No, sending the doctor is a way to ease them into the inevitable news - good or bad - before they reach the room and have to discover it for themselves.

He’s sure it’s only a few minutes that they’re waiting, but in the tense, anxious silence, it starts to feel like hours. Flora stands at his one side, clinging tight to his arm and standing statue-still, while Katrielle holds his hand on the other, fidgeting with nervous energy and glancing about the room. He finds himself unable to turn away from the lift he knows will bring the doctor, unable to lead his girls to sit in waiting-room chairs, or speak much-needed words of comfort to them. It’s all he can do to maintain any slight facade of calm, to keep himself strong for his daughters when fears of the worst insistently tease at the edges of his mind.

The lift doors open, and a man in a white coat walks out towards them. Not a one of them breathe.

“Professor,” the doctor greets, extending a hand to shake as he approaches; the girls reluctantly release him so he can meet it, polite and automatic, his conscious mind detached from the action. “Thank you for coming. We didn’t expect you to arrive so quickly.”

“We were already on our way when I received word of your call,” he explains, smoother, calmer than he feels, defaulting as always to cool-headed propriety in the wake of an impossibly difficult situation. “I suspect you have news for us, then.”

The doctor nods, and though the lull in conversation is only momentary, it seems to stretch across centuries. In the space between breaths his mind kicks into overdrive to analyze every last detail of the man’s stance, his expression, the tone of his words - does he look relieved, or distraught? Does he carry himself as if something horrible has occurred? What deeper inflection lies beneath the even-toned professionalism?

The pause lasts only seconds. The pause is the longest moment of his life.

“Alfendi regained consciousness about half an hour ago,” the doctor says at last.

Immediately, Flora all but collapses with a sob of relief that he’s certain all three of them feel. He lurches back and catches her before she can fall, and she buries her face in the crook of his shoulder to cry, and in an instant Katrielle’s clinging tight on his other side and doing the same. He clutches to them both, blinking back tears of his own, and later he’s sure he’ll be embarrassed over the emotional display, but right now all he can think is _he’s alive, thank_ **_god_ ** _his son is still alive._

The doctor good-naturedly stands back and allows them their moment, watches fondly as they collectively process their relief, until Hershel finally manages to look up with the expectation for him to continue. “Those folks from the Yard have already been up there and speaking to him,” he explains, “but I’m certain they’ll be more than willing to step back for a while so he can see his family. In the meantime, I can explain more to you about his current condition, and how we’ll be going forward with recovery, while we make our way upstairs.”

“Quite right,” Hershel agrees, and he’s momentarily stunned by how wrung-out and shaky his own voice sounds. “Quite right. Girls?” They nod against him, but don’t move from where they’re holding tight to his sides, so he simply places an arm on each of their shoulders and leads them forward into the lift while they collect themselves.

“As of the checks we did when he regained consciousness, he’s remarkably stable,” the doctor elaborates as they ascend. “We’ll keep him in-house for at least a few more days, though, possibly another week, to monitor his condition. And of course, even after release there will be a lengthy recovery process to contend with. We’ll be referring him to a cardiologist to assess the long-term damage done by the shooting and surgery, and between that and the next few days of monitoring his general condition, we’ll have a plan drawn up for physical therapy. And, though it’s not particularly my field, I would highly recommend seeking out support for the psychological effects as well.”

“It will be difficult to convince him as such,” Hershel notes. There’s no doubt being shot in the line of duty will have shaken him, but Alfendi will fight that notion with his every breath, he knows. He’ll put forth the image of a policeman so hyper-capable that he can shake off even a bullet to the heart, no matter what mental or emotional damage that does to him. “Alfendi can be quite stubborn when he wants to be.”

“That so? I didn’t get that impression at all when I spoke to him,” the doctor notes with surprise. “But I suppose you’d probably know better. I’ve only talked with him the one time, you’ve known him… well, um. Significantly longer than that, I would imagine.”

“Since he was nine,” he nods. People have an odd tendency to get dodgy about acknowledging his and Alfendi’s rather obvious lack of biological relation, something the both of them have found anywhere from mildly amusing to somewhat perplexing to (as Alfendi would bluntly put it) annoying. After all, it’s not as if Alfendi’s adoption is a secret or a touchy subject, and it’s not as if it’s made him any less of his son. It’s a simple fact, a part of their lives.

They reach the fifth floor and step out of the lift, walking towards Alfendi’s room, and that’s when he notices the first unusual thing.

When the doctor had mentioned ‘those folks from the Yard’, he’d assumed he meant simply the few who were already taking the time to keep an eye on Alfendi whilst unconscious. Commissioner Barton, whenever his work could spare him; and of course his two case partners, Justin and a young woman - Hilda, he thinks her name was, and he’s embarrassed not to know it outright, as he has fairly reasonable suspicions that she and Alfendi are… well. _Involved,_ as it were, in matters nothing to do with their work. (Not that Alfendi has ever admitted as such outright. He’s always been notoriously tight-lipped about his dating life, even with Katrielle, who has to drag even the barest details out of him.)

Now, though, he spots Justin standing just outside the room, and he’s talking to one of a handful of uniformed officers lingering around. He can’t make out their conversation from this far away, though, and by the time they’re close enough to hear, Justin has spotted them with a look of mild surprise and hastily dismissed the constables, who very deliberately avoid eye contact with anyone from the Layton family as they disperse.

“Mr. Layton,” Justin nods, closing the last of the distance between himself and Hershel (placing himself between them and Alfendi’s room as he does so, he can’t help but note, mind already half-consciously filing away observations to connect down the line). “Or, er— Professor, I mean. Sorry.”

“Either is quite all right,” he assures, keeping a tight hold on the girls at his side. They both try to peer around Justin into the room, Katrielle more obviously than Flora, but politely refrain from trying to rush past him just yet. (He doubts they will restrain themselves long, though, Katrielle especially.) “Have you been into see him yet? How is he?”

“Ah, yes,” Justin nods, fidgeting and not quite meeting Hershel’s gaze. (His eyes keep flicking nervously to the girls, like he’s more worried about them than Hershel himself.) “Soon as the doctors would let me. Hilda’s in with him now, if you don’t mind giving her another second to finish up.”

“Not at all,” he says, squeezing Katrielle’s arm in unspoken warning, already seeing the start of a rant boiling up in her for _daring_ to keep her from her beloved brother another second. Personally, he’s more interested in Justin’s obvious discomfort, the way he clearly doesn’t want to let them in to see Alfendi just yet, the inexplicable police presence—

Something is not right. That much is clear.

“You must be hungry, coming here right after school, Katrielle,” he says abruptly, releasing her arm to dig through his coat pocket and retrieve his wallet. “Why don’t you and Flora get yourselves something to eat while we’re waiting? My treat.”

It’s a rather blatant attempt to dismiss them for a moment or two, and from their expressions, he can tell they aren’t buying it as anything but. Still, after a moment Katrielle takes the proffered bills regardless, playing along. “...all right,” she says, reluctant, taking Flora’s hand as they set off back down the halls.

They’re both looking over their shoulders until they turn the corner - Flora, staring at Hershel with clear nervousness, and Katrielle, glaring at Justin with undisguised suspicion.

He watches until they’re out of sight, then turns back to Justin. “Would you care to tell me what’s going on?”

“Professor,” the man sighs, shoulders heavy with guilt. “You of all people understand, this is official police business we’re dealing with. I can’t be spilling details to civilians. I just can’t.”

“Mr. Lawson, please. This is my son.”

There’s a long, long stretch of heavy silence, and then Justin visibly relents, suddenly looking very, very tired. “...you already know that Alfendi was shot in the line of duty,” he begins. “I _really_ can’t give you all the details, but I can say that we were in pursuit of a suspect, and by the time we reached them, both Alfendi and said suspect were down.”

The tense air. The police presence. The reluctance to speak in front of his daughters. Hershel makes the regrettable connection moments before Justin takes a deep breath and confirms it aloud.

“When Alfendi regained consciousness, he confessed to having killed our suspect.”

Not for the first time that day, he feels detached from the situation at hand. He hears the words, registers them, but they don’t seem to have the emotional impact that he knows they ought to. (In part, he thinks, because it just doesn’t make sense - his boy is many things, some good, some bad, but he is by no means a _killer,_ even in a situation like this.)

Before he has time to process, though, or even process that he’s _not_ processing, they’re interrupted by a woman storming out of the hospital room. Hilda, he gathers, a strongly-built young lady with thick, flowing blonde hair, a police badge clipped to her waist, and impeccable makeup - or, he imagines it’s generally impeccable, but right now it’s running down her face in a fit of tears. She catches sight of both him and Justin with a start, covers her face with one manicured hand, and clips off down the hall before either of them can say a word.

“Hildy—” Justin shouts after her, wincing when she doesn’t even slow her pace. He turns back to Hershel, looking torn, and says, “Uh— I, um, suppose the room’s yours, then. Just… brace yourself, all right? He’s… different. Acting different, I mean. Since he woke up.”

“I can only imagine,” Hershel nods. The poor boy has been shot, after all; it would be a small miracle if he was already back to acting his usual self. “Thank you, Mr. Lawson. For this, and for all the time you’ve spent with him.”

“No need to thank me,” Justin says in a tone he can’t quite place. (He files that away to puzzle out later, too.) “Now, um, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Of course.” The man gives him a look of gratitude, then turns quickly on his heel, hurrying off after Hilda. He wonders, momentarily, what could have possibly got the poor woman so upset, but he supposes he’s about to go and see the other involved party regardless.

He takes a moment to collect himself, then heads through the door.

It has been eighteen days since he last saw Alfendi awake, so there’s an odd bit of cognitive dissonance when he walks in and sees him sitting up in the hospital bed, casual as anything, as opposed to laid-up and unconscious. He looks very slim and small in his baggy hospital gown, and he’s brushed his mess of hair back out his eyes, both of which serve to make him look much younger than he is in that moment. He’s staring out the window by his bedside, not quite looking up as Hershel enters, giving him plenty of time to deal with the swell of emotion in his throat before he makes his way to the chair right next to the bed.

“My dear boy,” he says gently, a slight tremor not quite trained out of his voice. He reaches for Alfendi’s closest hand and squeezes it fondly, reassured by the hint of pulse he can feel at the boy’s wrist. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you fully back among the living.”

The boy turns fully to face him, a slight ghost of a smile on his lips. “Father,” he says, voice an odd mirror of his own in its quiet gentleness. “I’m so sorry to have worried you. I really am. Where are the girls?”

“They’ll be back shortly. I sent them to get something to eat while you finished your, ah, conversation. How are you feeling?”

Alfendi hums with thought, glancing upwards as he does so. “As well as I can be, all things considering. A touch disoriented, understandably.” There’s a long pause, and then, casually, with just the faintest touch of sadness, he adds, “I think I may have just been broken up with.”

“Oh,” Hershel says, at a loss for how else he might respond to such a sudden admission. Well, that’s several little mysteries solved - his relationship with Hilda, for one, as well as the poor woman’s state upon leaving the room not minutes ago. It’s… uncharacteristic of Alfendi to be so forthcoming about such details, though, not to mention so cavalier about the confession. (A lot of things about Alfendi right now, he’s suddenly realizing, are _very_ uncharacteristic of him, more so than he would have imagined even with Justin’s warning.) “I’m… very sorry to hear that, dear boy.”

Alfendi shrugs, looking only mildly bothered. “I can’t say I particularly blame her, given the circumstances,” he says nonchalantly. After a moment, his hand tenses almost imperceptibly under Hershel’s. “On the topic, ah - there’s something I ought to tell you, father. Something I’d rather you hear from me.”

He remembers what Justin told him, and knows it’s likely the same information Alfendi is trying to confide in him now. He decides to play dumb regardless. “Of course, Alfendi. Whatever you want to say to me, I’m listening.”

“It will be in the papers, certainly,” Alfendi notes. He looks back up, meeting Hershel’s gaze, and that’s when he realizes Alfendi’s normally-bright eyes are now dull, the usual light in them nowhere to be found. His whole face looks different, really; the general structure is the same, but all the features seem different, the expression one he’s never seen before. Even the way he’s tucked his bangs back is entirely unlike Alfendi, so far from the artful disarray he usually goes for. Justin had warned him that Alfendi was behaving _differently_ _,_ yes, but this had vaulted well over the line of different and was bordering _unrecognizable._

The man before him, he realizes with quiet alarm, is not his son. He has his body, yes, but his mind, his _spirit_ \- this is a stranger sitting before him, wearing his son’s face.

“I was in pursuit of a suspect when I was shot,” the man who is not quite Alfendi says, eerily calm. “I shot him twice - first in the side, crippling him, and then in the forehead at the same moment he shot me in the heart. He is dead, and I am responsible. I’m… sorry, father. I know this must be a shock to you.”

It should be. It really _should_ be shocking, but it isn’t, especially when held up to the _very_ -present shock of realizing Alfendi is very literally not himself. So he muddles through to try and determine _why_ he isn’t properly surprised, why his own son confessing to murder isn’t shaking him, and after a moment, the reason becomes stunningly obvious.

“I don’t believe you,” he says with alarming calm before he can stop himself.

Not-quite-Alfendi’s brow furrows. “Father. Why on earth would I lie about such a thing? I’m telling you, I shot that man. I remember it clearly—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupts gently, because it really doesn’t. His lack of belief won’t change Alfendi’s confession, nor will Alfendi’s confession change the facts of the case, which he suspects, one way or another, will prove his innocence. (Alfendi had always been quietly uncomfortable at even carrying a gun, loathe though he was to admit it. Alfendi found it a source of pride that he could take down criminals without having to resort to shooting them down. Alfendi, he is almost positive, did not kill that man.) He pats his son’s hand, rising from his chair. “Will you be alright if I leave for just a moment? I’d like to speak with the doctor, and I ought to see if your sisters are on their way back yet.”

The man who isn’t quite Alfendi fixes him with an uncertain look, but nods. “I suppose.”

Hershel smiles at him, and tries to turn to leave, but Alfendi catches his hand tight and stops him just before he can. When he turns back, not-quite-Alfendi is staring at his own hand in mild confusion, as if it had held on out of his control. “...did you need something, my boy?”

“...No. Or— I don’t know,” he replies, sounding mildly distressed. He reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose, head falling slightly forward, a lock or two of hair slipping out from behind his ear. “My head’s killing,” he murmurs, almost too soft to hear.

“I’ll see if the doctor will bring you something for that,” Hershel promises, experimentally attempting to tug his hand free again. Alfendi holds that much tighter in response, the slightest tremor under his skin.

“My head,” Alfendi repeats, voice shaking. He takes in a heaved breath, pitching forward suddenly, and Hershel instinctively grabs his shoulder with his other hand to steady him. The boy turns to look at him, and his heart lurches as he sees the light in his panicked eyes, realizes suddenly _that’s_ **_Alfendi_ ** _again,_ that it’s his son once more and he looks _terrified_ in a way Hershel hasn’t seen since he was a young boy. “Father.”

“I’m here,” he all but whispers, struggling to find his voice. “I’m here, my boy, it’s all right—”

 _“I didn’t do it,”_ he growls, frantic, panicked, almost animalistic. “I don’t know why he’s here or why he’s lying to them - I didn’t _do it,_ father, I don’t remember shooting him, you need to believe me—”

“I do, Alfendi. I swear to you, I do, I know you wouldn’t—”

“God, my _head,”_ he wails, releasing Hershel’s hand to clutch at his head with both of his own, all but clawing at his face. “It hurts, it _hurts,_ I don’t want to go back, please, I don’t want him to—”

“I’ll fetch the doctor,” he declares, standing abruptly. “Just breathe, dear boy, I’ll be right back—”

 _“Don’t go._ Please, please don’t leave—”

“I won’t be a moment,” he says, already regretful, and dashes out of the room.

(He will not realize until much, much later that this is the last conversation he will have with the boy he raised.)

 

~

 

Divergent personality disorder, the doctors had told him. It happened sometimes in response to trauma, they explained, a literal split personality to help bear the emotional load. Certainly, it explained why not-quite-Alfendi was confessing to the murder while original-Alfendi claimed to have no memory of the entire affair - he’d split off the act into an entirely different persona to rationalize it.

(Only Hershel didn’t believe that. He still didn’t believe that, even after the entire Yard had concluded otherwise - save Mr. Lawson, he’d been told, and of course Commissioner Barton himself, both of whom still believed there must be some forgotten scrap of evidence proving him innocent. No, he didn’t believe his son, split personality or otherwise, could have ever really brought himself to kill.

Which, of course, raised the question of _why_ Alfendi’s new personality so wholeheartedly believed himself responsible.)

The adjustment had been… difficult, to say the least. He couldn’t hide the truth from the girls, much as he protectively wanted to try, and so they had been introduced to the new Alfendi shortly after he was. Katrielle, taking heartily after her beloved sibling in a fit of anger-disguising-sadness, had vehemently declared he was no longer her brother and stormed out before Hershel could stop her. Flora had soldiered on until they’d bid Alfendi good night and left the hospital, at which point she naturally broke down sobbing until she finally passed out from pure exhaustion. He’d carried her to bed, then spent the rest of the night sitting up with Katrielle, who’d been too angry and upset to sleep.

“My brother is dead,” she’d whimpered against his shoulder at one point, already late into the night.

“No, my dear girl, he’s not,” he replied, smoothing her hair back from her tear-drenched face. “Alfendi is different now, yes, but he’s still very much with us. For that, I think we ought to be grateful.”

“I heard the police talking when we went down to the cafeteria,” she mumbled, not quite looking at him. “Talking about the shooting. Saying he’d already confessed.”

Hershel hadn’t been able to restrain a sigh, heavy and exhausted. “I had hoped you wouldn’t hear, but I suspected you might,” he admits. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Katrielle. I wish you had heard it from me rather than secondhand.”

“It’s rubbish. Alfendi wouldn’t kill anyone. He _wouldn’t,_ would he, father?”

“I don’t think he would, no. But we really don’t have any say in that, my dear. That will be up to the police.”

Katrielle huffed against him. “The police are being foolish. I’ll become a detective like you used to be, and clear his name myself.”

“I was never a detective, Katrielle,” he reminded her, but the words stuck with him regardless.

(He remembered, idly, when Claire had died. It’s not a time he generally liked to reminisce on, but at that moment, it was important that he do so, because his feelings and actions back then were starting to repeat, all these years later, in a situation wholly different and yet not entirely dissimilar. After her death, naturally, he’d been distraught, inconsolable, but then - then, grief gave way to questioning the circumstances, the response, the paltry reporting, the lack of closure, and soon he had taken the initiative to find answers himself.

Things were not entirely different now. Alfendi was alive, but changed, and the circumstances therein were murky and suspect, and he could not truly trust the professionals to handle things properly, to find the answers he currently lacked.

There’s no reason he couldn’t approach things the same way now.

It had been eighteen days - or, nineteen, rather; it was already well past midnight - since his son was shot. He retrieved an empty notebook, wrote _Forbodium castle shooting_ on the top of the first page, and began to record all he knew.)

 

~

 

It has been nearly five months since Inspector Alfendi Layton was shot in the line of duty. Between the circumstances and his willingness to cooperate with the investigation, he had avoided firing for his role in the death of suspect Keelan Makepeace, and instead was reassigned to solo work in a back-office of Scotland Yard. (He has expressed, many times, that he’s simply grateful for the second chance, not to mention joking that being taken off field work is more a blessing than a punishment.)

Archaeology professor Hershel Layton, his father, has been quietly investigating the circumstances of his shooting for nearly five months. And after all his research, his interviews, his observations, his months of time with his son’s newly-developed alternate personality, he is still wholly convinced of one thing: Alfendi Layton did not kill Keelan Makepeace.

(If he could simply puzzle out who _did,_ he could probably present his findings to the Yard and have Alfendi’s name cleared within an afternoon.)

There’s a knock at his office door. He turns, setting aside his notebook full of personal research, and calls, “Come right in.” He suspects it’s a student coming to his office hours, given there’s an exam looming just around the corner.

Sure enough, the door creaks open, and a young woman steps in, shutting the door politely behind her. He doesn’t recognize her, he notes - she’s positively tiny, looking younger than she probably is (though even then, he doubts she’s older than eighteen at a stretch), with long blonde hair held back in a tight, high ponytail, and dark eyes with an unreadable expression. “I hope I’m not interrupting you, professor,” she says.

“Not at all,” he replies, but inwardly, he finds his brain scrambling to determine which of his classes this young lady is in. He can’t for the life of him recall seeing her in a single one of them. “Please, feel free to take a seat, Miss…?”

“Diane,” she supplies, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes. She takes a few steps closer, subtly pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve. “I won’t take up a moment of your time, professor, no need to worry. I simply have a few questions for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> ~~yes that ending's supposed to be implying Why Professor Hershel Layton up And Vanished, yes I hate myself for writing it, no I don't think she killed him but I'm sTILL WORRIED, YES I KNOW THAT I'M THE ONE WHO WROTE IT BUT I'M STILL WORRIED FOR HIM,~~
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> Thank you so much for reading!! You can catch me @ anonymouspuzzler on tumblr or @BigPuzz on twitter!!


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